Best Sports Broadcast Personality

John Rooney

In September 2006, this paper noted that in John Rooney's final year as play-by-play announcer for the Minnesota Twins, the team won the World Series. Same thing when he worked for the Chicago White Sox. Though Rooney was in his first year as the Mike Shannon's partner in the Cardinals' radio booth, we wrote, "On behalf of championship-starved Cardinals fans everywhere, we say to John Rooney: 'Welcome to St. Louis. Now leave.'" Of course our tongue was planted firmly in cheek, but when the Cardinals put together their miraculous playoff run and won the World Series — well, frankly, we worried. Had we not made the classic error of mistaking correlation for causation? Would the Cardinals, for the first time in this paper's august history, actually listen to one of our suggestions? Thankfully, the answer to both questions was no, and no one is happier than we are to be wrong. See: We love John Rooney. He knows his baseball, calls a good game and has the right sense of humor to mesh perfectly with Mike "Heh, Heh, Heh" Shannon. As for what we wrote two years ago? Like a blown save by the Cardinals' bullpen, it's best forgotten quickly.